Valery Belenky
Valeri Belenki | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Full name | Valeri Vladimirovich Belenki | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Born | Baku | 5 September 1969||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Discipline | Men's artistic gymnastics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Valeri Vladimirovich Belenki (Russian: Валерий Владимирович Беленький, German: Valeri Belenki; born 5 September 1969) is a retired Azerbaijani-German artistic gymnast who competed in the 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics.
Career[]
Belenki was born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan, in a Jewish family.[1]
He competed for the Soviet Union/Unified Team until 1992 when this federation was disbanded following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Belenki's greatest achievements are the team gold and all around bronze he won with the Unified Team in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Belenky also won gold in the pommel horse event at the 1991 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, where he competed for the USSR.
Because Azerbaijan did not have a gymnastics federation for him to compete for in the 1993 world championships in Birmingham, Belenky instead competed as an unattached athlete. In 1994 he became a German citizen and represented that nation in the 1996 Olympics, helping the team to a seventh-place finish and coming 6th in the all-around.
In 2013, he was elected to the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.[2] In 2015, he was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame as a representative of Azerbaijan.
See also[]
- List of select Jewish gymnasts
References[]
- ^ Taylor, Paul (2004). Jews and the Olympic Games: The Clash Between Sport and Politics : With a Complete Review of Jewish Olympic Medallists. ISBN 9781903900871.
- ^ "International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame: Valeri Belenki".
External links[]
- 1969 births
- Living people
- Soviet male artistic gymnasts
- Azerbaijani male artistic gymnasts
- German male artistic gymnasts
- Olympic gymnasts of the Unified Team
- Olympic gymnasts of Germany
- Gymnasts at the 1992 Summer Olympics
- Gymnasts at the 1996 Summer Olympics
- Olympic gold medalists for the Unified Team
- Olympic bronze medalists for the Unified Team
- World champion gymnasts
- Medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
- Sportspeople from Baku
- Soviet Azerbaijani people
- Azerbaijani Jews
- Jewish gymnasts
- Olympic medalists in gymnastics
- Soviet Jews
- International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame inductees
- Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics
- Recipients of the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg
- Azerbaijani sportspeople stubs
- European artistic gymnast stubs
- German artistic gymnast stubs